Andy Mitten: Why are Manchester United fans not allowed to fly the flag at Old Trafford?

General view of a Manchester United flag at Old Trafford before a match.

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We ran a competition in United We Stand a decade ago to see which unusual objects readers could smuggle into a football ground.

It was inspired after ultras in Milan carried a scooter onto their curva and tossed it from the second tier. What must the gatemen have been thinking as they wheeled a scooter up one of the San Siro’s vast ramps?

This being the pre-camera phone and selfie age, we had to take the readers for their word.

LOOK: Fan gallery: Manchester United supporters before the win over Liverpool

One reckoned he got his dog inside his jacket and into Old Trafford for a game and that it had barked when United scored, another a homing pigeon which he set off and let it return home before seeing the game.

One said he took a trophy into Manchester City’s ground and that was a first because it hadn’t seen one since 1976.

It was light-hearted nonsense in the days when fans weren’t subjected to random pat-down checks like you get going through airport security.

It seems inconceivable now, but during the protests against the Glazer takeover someone got an effigy resembling Malcolm Glazer and hung it from the Stretford End. Giant flags dripping with paint referenced the Peterloo massacre.

United have cracked down. A hardcore female fan who had an anti-Glazer flag has been banned from Old Trafford, but fans still managed to sneak yellow plastic ‘Do Not Slip’ signs into Sunday’s game to wave them whenever Steven Gerrard came close.

The slipping theme was a common one, with Liverpool’s main man mocked mercilessly.

United fans had flags made poking fun at Liverpool. Almost all were taken down for a variety of reasons. Some (a scruffy ‘24 YEARS YSB’) were deemed offensive, while more thought had gone into a flag that read ‘Au revoir Gerrard, Come back when you’ve won one’.

The laws are skewed and quash originality. United fans hoping to pass two giant surfer flags, one a club crest, the other saying ‘We’ll Never Die’ around the stadium before Sunday’s game as they’d done before at big matches were denied by the club – again on safety grounds.

WATCH: Manchester United fans sing '12 Cantonas' v Liverpool

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But why, when they’d been allowed before? United had received complaints, with one fan saying it obstructed his view as the teams came out, another that it made his suit dirty as it passed ahead.

The flags are typically up for a minute. God help either of the complainants if they ever watch a game in Italy or Argentina. The smoke from those flares can play havoc with your dinner jacket.

Fans who buy flags on a stick outside the ground now get the sticks confiscated and the wooden sticks snapped at the turnstile, upsetting many a kid.

It’s that old health and safety reason – granted, a wooden stick could poke an eye out.

But shouldn’t fans have been issued with a health and safety warning before risking being hit by a wayward shot from Darron Gibson or Niall Quinn?

It’s all baffling. For Sir Alex Ferguson’s final match against Swansea City in 2013, fans were presented with a flag – on a stick. Old Trafford looked great, yet when fans tried to take those very flags to subsequent games they were barred.

Liverpool’s Kop has large tifo flags which work really well and add to the colour and atmosphere. United deny such flags access to Old Trafford – though, charitably, they let a huge flag with Barclays’ logo on surf around the ground when the 2007 league title was won.

And as United fans were having their flags confiscated on Sunday, Liverpool fans with similar sized flags in the away end faced no such confiscations.

United have tried to help improve the Old Trafford atmosphere in recent years. They’ve engaged with fans, yet they’re being spoilsports here, just as FIFA were in the World Cup when every single supporter flag was moved from the perimeter of stadiums, stripping them of the colour and humour that such banners provide.